Billy Beane Compares Mets’ Staff To A’s

In an interview with Ken Davidoff of the NY Post, Athletics’ General Manager Billy Beane compared the Mets’ young pitchers to his star-studded rotation in Oakland during the early 2000’s. The A’s staff featured three top starters in Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson, who carried the team to multiple playoff berths.

“There’s definitely a difference in styles,” Beane said. “The Mets guys are pure, dominant, power guys who can overwhelm you with your fastball. Our guys all had good arms. They were sort of technicians, to some extent.”

“Mulder could sit you up and sit you down in an hour and 40 minutes. Barry had that big curveball. Hudson had the power sinker, the split-finger and changeup.”

“Physically, the Mets guys are right out of the power-pitcher handbook. Our guys struck out a lot of guys, but they were just great pitchers in terms of their ability to mix things up.”

As Davidoff notes in his article, Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard all rank inside the top five in the league in average fastball velocity. All three throw 95 MPH or more on average. There haven’t been many trio’s in history who have thrown this hard, not even the San Francisco’s World Series rotation in 2010.

“You’ve got the guys with the Mets all throwing in the mid-90s and above,” said Bobby Evans who was San Francisco’s assistant GM in 2010. “These were guys 91, 92, more in the average-fastball range. These Met guys are absolutely firing bullets.”

Ron Darling also spoke highly of the Mets rotation, saying they have more talent than the ’80’s Mets. However, he cautioned that they need to perform at a high level for a longer period of time before entering the discussion of the best ever.

“What made the ’80s guys great is that they did it for six years. I think, from my perspective, there’s much more talent here, but they’ve got to be able to match it for six years.”